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Do you find words tumbling out of your mouth before
you really know what you are saying? Or are you the kind of person who
takes so long to say something that others stop listening? It might be
time to check your “blirt” level.

The Brief Loquaciousness
and Interpersonal Responsiveness Test (BLIRT), developed by Dr. William
Swann and Peter Rentfrow in the Department of
Psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, measures how quickly
and effusively people orally respond to others.

Dr. William Swann

“Blirtatiousness has more to do with the rapidity and number of people’s
verbal responses rather than the specific content,” Swann said.
Because high blirters respond quickly and effusively to others, they
are seen as more attentive and more likely to meet the needs of the
listener.

“High blirters make themselves known and understood much
more quickly than do low blirters,” he said. “An advantage
of being a high blirter is that you are understood more rapidly
than are low
blirters
and as a result you are more apt to get your needs met. So, not
only do you come across as more socially skilled but you are also
known.
And that’s good unless you have something you don’t
particularly want others to know about.”

BLIRT levels do
not appear to be related to intelligence or gender, but not surprisingly,
BLIRT levels among some occupations are rather
predictable.
One study compared the blirtatiousness of car salespeople and librarians.
As expected, the salespeople had a significantly higher score on
the BLIRT.

The researchers have conducted several studies measuring
how people respond to high and low blirters as well as how differing
BLIRT
levels can affect
intimate relationships.

In one study, the researchers looked at
the classroom success of high blirters versus low blirters. They
found that classmates of
high blirters
were impressed with them early in the semester, but those opinions
waned later.

Several studies pitted a “blirtatious” confederate
against a participant attempting to concentrate on an assignment.
Reaction of the participant could be predicted to an extent
based on the BLIRT score.

“Early in the semester, while impressions are first being
formed, high blirters may have the advantage because they seem
more engaged,
intelligent and competent than their low blirter classmates,” Swann said. “But
that advantage fades for two reasons. First, as low blirters become
more comfortable in the classroom they may say more than at the outset, and
second, because blirtatiousness is not associated with intelligence
their classmates come to realize that the exuberance of some high blirters
can exceed their insightfulness.”

This early likeability of
high blirters was only maintained if the students’ grades
were high, but over the semester classmates’ attitudes became
markedly more negative toward those high blirters with low grades.

Two
additional studies examined how well BLIRT scores could predict
behavior and what physiological changes occurred when high and
low blirters were
antagonized. In both studies, after completing the BLIRT, a participant
was placed in a room with a confederate and asked to draw several
pictures depicting emotions associated with childhood events. In
one of the
studies, the confederate was a woman who talked loudly on her cell
phone throughout
the experiment. In the other a young man threw paper wads and made
obnoxious comments to the participant. During the experiment, blood
pressure was
monitored every five minutes to measure any changes.

In both experiments,
participants’ BLIRT scores predicted how they
reacted to the confederate’s annoying behavior. High blirters
were much more likely to verbally react to the confederate, but
they also
generally maintained a lower blood pressure. In contrast, low blirters
were more likely to minimize comments, but their blood pressure
was higher.

“In the study with the woman on the phone, high blirters were more likely
to say something to the confederate but stayed calm,” Swann
said. “Low
blirters remained quiet while their physiological systems slipped
into overdrive. In the one with the obnoxious man, high blirters
were more
likely to be amused and draw the confederate into a conversation.
The low blirters in that study withdrew and became visibly disgruntled
and
highly aroused.

Low blirters and high blirters experienced
different levels of antagonism and physiological change.
High blirters were most likely to react to the confederate,
but they also maintained lower blood pressure.

“The blood pressure of the high blirter may go up a little
bit at the beginning, but then it goes right back down,” he
said. “People
ask me which is better to be, high or low, and I can’t really
tell you. But from the perspective of what’s going on physiologically
in response to conflict I can say it’s better to be a high
blirter and get the message out. If you suppress your feelings
and say nothing
you end up feeling constant anger.”

Comparisons of BLIRT scores
in heterosexual couples were examined in “The
Precarious Couple Effect: Verbally inhibited men + critical, disinhibited
women = bad chemistry,” a study by Swann, Rentfrow and Dr.
Sam Gosling, also of the university’s Department of Psychology.

They
found lower relationship satisfaction for both partners when the
man was more verbally inhibited than the woman—that is when
the man was a low blirter and his partner was a high blirter—than
when both partners were equal on the BLIRT scale or when the man
was a high
blirter with a low blirter woman. But the real difference came
when they examined the “precarious couple effect.”

“Relationships in which the woman is more blirtatious than
the man are fine if the woman is accepting of the man,” Swann
said. “They
run into trouble, though, when the woman is highly critical, because
her blirtatiousness amplifies her criticalness and this sours the
relationship. Interestingly, the gender of the high and low blirter
is critical in
that the criticalness of men does not undermine relationship satisfaction
when the man is more blirtatious than the woman.”

Blirtatiousness
does seem to amplify other characteristics, good and bad. High
blirters risk that poor personality traits, such
as gruffness,
insensitivity and tactlessness, will be much more apparent than
low blirters.

“High blirters can’t help themselves from talking—they need
to talk,” Swann said. “Some of us have things to say
and some of us don’t, or more precisely some of us have intelligent
things to say and some of us don’t. The problem with high
blirters is that they can’t keep themselves from saying it.”